Who cares what your customers want?

Feb13'14

How do you make sure you sell more products or generate more business leads from your customers? You directly target the needs of your customers and give ‘em what they want.

But this is easier said than done. Most new companies may not have any idea what their customers exact needs are because they haven’t had time to figure them out yet.

For those of you with established companies, you may be meeting the needs of new customers but are you doing enough to keep your existing customers happy?

In this article I’ll show you how to profile your customers give you examples of how you can address those needs.

Creating a customer profile

For the purposes of this article, my example company will be an online clothing shop, called ‘In stitches’.

The company: In stitches is an independent clothing label that sells-off piste (not mainstream) branded clothes. They’ve been ‘etailing’ for the past 3 years and 100% of their sales are made online i.e. They don’t sell from a physical shop.

Their customers are predominantly males aged 30 – 50 who are after unique clothing, at reasonable prices (but are prepared to pay the price if they can perceive the value) and don’t want me-too brands.

Their best sellers are t-shirts, jeans, shirts and shoes.

They’re currently updating their website and decide to profile one of their main customer types to make sure they capture their needs before making any design changes.

Customer Type 1 Luke is a mature student, he hasn’t got a great deal of money but likes to buy unique clothing and stand out from the crowd. He’s loyal to a brand when he finds the right look for him. He owns a smartphone and is tech savvy, so is frequently on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites and social networks such as Instagram. He doesn’t mind waiting for his deliveries to arrive but would love to get next delivery if money wasn’t an issue. Luke enjoys going to the pub and gigs with his mates.

Offer a local pickup service that’s free. There are services such as Collect Plus who can help with this and it saves you time and postage costs.

Website

Get mobile friendly – if Luke is tech savvy and has a smart phone, make sure he can browse and buy online easy with his phone or tablet

Update your photography – this doesn’t mean you have to take new photos of every product, but make sure the lifestyle shots match Luke’s lifestyle so that he instantly resonates with your brand.

Can I get all the info I need in an instant? Have you got delivery costs, terms, multiple product photos and sizing info on each product. Make this easy and remove any friction to the buying process

Custom pages for Luke – figure out what Luke would wear and build customised landing pages for each of your customers to quickly highlight products that fir with their life. e.g. t-shirt, jean, shoe combos. Offer a deal for buying all of the products on that page – ‘your style’ pages!

Promotion

New marketing techniques are not about making sales, but creating conversations, and this is what you should be doing on Twitter and Facebook – talk with your customers, get to know their needs.

If you’re already on social media, look into joining some of the newer upcoming social platforms, such as Instagram to introduce your brand to a whole new audience.

Offer people discounts when they upload and share pictures of themselves in your products

And finally…

In summary; ask yourself the questions that your customers would be asking, think of ways to respond to their needs and put those ideas into action.

All of the above is based on a clothing site, but the ideas can easily translate across to other industries.

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